Entertainment Weekly's Scores

Select another publication »
For 3,519 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 81% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 18% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 78
Highest review score: 100 The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do
Lowest review score: 0 Playing With Fire
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,085 out of 3519
  2. Mixed: 407 out of 3519
  3. Negative: 27 out of 3519
3519 music reviews
view
per page
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone
    The band runs through intricately nuanced compositions with the fervor of an inspired jam session.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Fall to Grace
    She wails through 12 cutting tracks about love on the rocks with so much soulful realness. [7 Dec 2012, p.75]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Nov 30, 2012
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Red Dirt Road
    The CD hits a high point with the churning, turboed bluegrass of ''Caroline.'' But it's all just a warm-up for the title track, in which the pair's recollections of rites of passage form a gutsy account of the terrible beauty of coming of age.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Travelogue
    The miracle is that Vince Mendoza's symphonic arrangements sometimes place Mitchell's alto in even more intimate climes than the scaled-back settings that surrounded her seminal soprano. [22 Nov 2002, p.78]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Give
    There are eight originals seething with funky new millennium rhythms and succulent harmonic flights. [19 Mar 2004, p.65]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Takk...
    At times Takk almost rocks--as much as tiny ice-crystal elves from the magical land of Narnia can rock, but still. [16 Sep 2005, p.88]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 64 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Yell Fire!
    Who says protest songs can't be both fiery and fun? [4 Aug 2006, p.68]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Just Us Kids
    The protest songs on Just Us Kids, particularly 'Cheney's Toy,' will hog all the attention, but they're the least of this roots rocker's treasures here. It's James McMurtry's brilliant character sketches that really shine.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Chutes Too Narrow
    Just the record you'd want: production a bit bigger, and songs more adventurous but no less indelible. [Listen 2 This supplement, Oct 2003, p.14]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    I See You
    The payoff is the boldest work yet from a band famous for subtlety--the sound of the xx hitting the caps-lock key.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Rooty
    But sound for sound's sake isn't what makes the disc work; it's the recurring female singers, who add forlorn soul to the rhythms.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Young Machines
    A soothing swoon. [24 Oct 2003, p.107]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 73 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Indian Tower
    By combining math-rock complexity with raw power, songs like "Tower" and "Black Rock Man" hypnotize as they pulverize. [27 Jan 2006, p.84]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Pretty Little Head
    Not every moment is essential, but compromise just isn't part of McKay's dazzling, defiant repertoire.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Versus
    Versus, Usher's 
nine-track companion to this year's Raymond v Raymond, finds the soul star no less randy than when we left him.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Revelling/Reckoning
    Pick from either the funky Revelling or the more downbeat Reckoning and you'll be rewarded with an intimate new mood or insight, expertly framed by the singer's acoustic-based every-style. [13 Apr 2001, p.76]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 56 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Survival Of The Sickest
    [Scott's] aching redemption songs and seething revenge tirades give the album a sharp contemporary edge. [10 Sep 2004, p.165]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Murray's Revenge
    This gem leaves you wanting more. [21 Apr 2006, p.75]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 90 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
    The fact that this album feels so complete even without any words from his old partner reinforces just what peak form Big Boi is in.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    OST
    Most soundtracks are compilations of the obvious... Almost Famous is the grand exception, avoiding easy choices while meticulously re-creating the feeling of being young, awkward, and in love with music in the early '70s.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Virginia Creeper
    Phillips' fragile, tender songs are well suited to his uneasy protagonists. [5 Mar 2004, p.69]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    I'm Going Away
    Fans can breathe easy: The weirdness that so delights them isn't Going anywhere just yet.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Escondida
    Starbucks should replace Norah Jones with Holland as its mood musician of choice; her compositional brew is smooth, with jolts of witty malice.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Lost Planets & Phantom Voices
    When Sprout is both tuneful and coherent... he achieves pure bliss. [14 Mar 2003, p.67]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 60 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Folklore
    Folklore is about the joy of making something new out of random elements, and few other albums this year have captured that pleasure as well as this one does. [28 Nov 2003, p.123]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 69 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    iTunes Session [EP]
    All the better to hear the magnificent storytelling on "Shankill Butchers," the gentlest hymn ever written about throat slashers. [9 Aug 2011, p.75]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Aug 11, 2011
    • 73 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Rejected Unknown
    [Johnston's] most focused and rewarding album in ages. [12 Oct 2001, p.88]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Show Your Bones
    Show Your Bones picks up where "Maps" left off, with the trio finding a middle ground between self-conscious primitivism and refined pop. [31 Mar 2006, p.60]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Whole Love
    With The Whole Love, Wilco make noise-pop exciting again, perhaps because the pop part doesn't come easy.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Hyacinths and Thistles
    These music box songs never overstay their welcome.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Maybach Music Group Presents: Self Made, Vol. 2
    Self Made Vol. 2, doubles down on the talent.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Both Sides Of The Gun
    It's occasionally a bit too easy to play spot-the-influences with Harper's stuff... but his unabashed, unaffected nostalgia is more charming than irritating. [24 Mar 2006, p.69]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 73 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Write Me Back
    Kelly's party-host earnestness is far more infectious than his three-way scenarios ever were.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Sweetener
    A fascinating and sneakily complex pop album that adds new creative wrinkles to Grande’s already estimable repertoire.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Dancing Queen
    Dancing Queen is not a staid history lesson. Instead, it’s a curious experiment that ultimately reveals the endurance of two musical institutions whose artistry has always been rather inimitable.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Satanic Satanist
    Combining Motown falsettos and the best of late-'60s groove rock with spacey loops and hipster-art-collective ?sing-alongs, they deliver a sound that's friendly and familiar without being derivative; it's a sort of retrofitted make-out van on a club crawl.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Forever
    An earthy-meets-outré, smart yet accessible set that proves Lowery's all he's cracked up to be.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Songbird
    Nelson's finest in a decade.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Scene Of The Crime
    Is there a more wrenching soul singer alive than Bettye LaVette? If so, keep it to yourself, because I'm too wrung out from The Scene of the Crime's intensity to take anything more emotionally potent.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Let Go
    A dozen near-perfect pop songs, each one teeming with joyful desperation.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Other People's Lives
    Davies has lost little of his ability to marry great rock melodies to exquisitely offbeat lyrics. [24 Feb 2006, p.61]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 77 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    New
    New is as apt an album title as you'll find: Not only does it announce McCartney's first batch of original songs in six years, it also celebrates the idea that pop music can still invigorate, inspire, and surprise--even if you had a hand in inventing it.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Maroon
    On their latest, Maroon, they've delivered that too rare musical commodity: a disc overflowing with potential hits.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    E-MO-TION
    Her effervescent follow-up [is] an ’80s-inflected collection of sweetly breezy dance-pop baubles.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Under The Iron Sea
    Aside from a single misstep (the title track, an instrumental that could serve as the too-ponderous theme for an art film about the rise and fall of Atlantis), the strings and things work well, adding density and drama.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Big Day
    A master lyricist, a musical omnivore, Chance and his family of producers and instrumentalists channel all the big emotions of the big day in a swirl of bliss, marital and otherwise.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    World's Apart
    Their punk and indie roots are still very much in evidence... But the separation-of-instruments clarity and punchier dynamics that propel each song owe more to the Who. [28 Jan 2005, p.81]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    OH (Ohio)
    Chief Lambchopper Kurt Wagner's magpie tendencies are fully displayed on the band's lovely 10th proper album.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Turn On The Bright Lights
    Interpol mix the propulsive sonic backgrounds and emotional swells of early-'80s post-punk with unexpected bursts of melody and their own brand of wit to create one of themost exciting new sounds of the year. [23 Aug 2002, p.142]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    808s & Heartbreak
    He offers this glimpse of the soul beneath the swagger, and we like him better for it.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Donnas Turn 21
    Armed with guitar-driven ditties as tight as their leather pants and lyrics sharper than those of artists twice their age, the newly legal pop-punk saviors dole out another dose of Ramones-style dope. [1/19/2001, p.86]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Live A Little
    Live a Little... finds Pernice throwing off the shackles of overenunciation and fussy production.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Loyalty To Loyalty
    On their stunning and haunting second album, the Long Beach, Calif., quartet have racheted up their faux-mono production values and woozy chops. [26 Sep 2008, p.93]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    July Flame
    Veirs' new album July Flame sends us on hikes through dreamy landscapes evoked by her uniquely tangy voice, casting minimal instrumentation in glistening arrangements to captivate the melancholy imagination.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Yeezus
    This album has the potential to mess with your whole year.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    These Are The Vistas
    With equal measures of beauty, terror, and comedy in their own stuff, there's plenty going on besides stunt covers. [2 May 2003, p.71]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Abattoir Blues / The Lyre Of Orpheus
    Cave... remains a singular sensation. [29 Oct 2004, p.69]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Sound Of Silver
    While Sound of Silver still delivers terrific buzzy dance-space jams ... it also contains wispy hints of New Order and Bowie... and Murphy's best song-making efforts to date.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Social Cues
    The album's introspection paired with its urgent energy make Cage The Elephant sound more passionate than ever. [3/10 May 2019, p.95]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Apr 29, 2019
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The MF Life
    Slow-burning pathos remain her strongest suit. [23 Mar 2012, p.74]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Mar 21, 2012
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    I, I
    i,i, feels as confident as anything he’s ever done: a dense, richly layered showcase for his continued aversion to the standard rules of grammar and the deepening of his defiantly uncommercial sound.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Yours Truly
    One of the most purely enjoyable albums of the year, powered by her lithe, Broadway-honed voice and a canny exploitation of her most "adult" indulgence: nostalgia.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Wolfmother
    Wolfmother's ultraconfident tracks could unclog rock radio's weakened arteries. [28 Apr 2006, p.136]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 72 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Fate
    Strict modernists may chafe at the band's unapologetically backward-glancing aesthetic, but the rest should happily succumb to the shaggy charm of Fate's easy-like-Sunday-morning ramblings.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Rave On Buddy Holly
    Tribute albums are usually mawkish, well-meaning bores. Not Rave On Buddy Holly: Nineteen acts interpret proto-rocker Holly's canon with vigorous invention.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Pure Heroine
    10 songs here, and not one loser in the bunch. [11 Oct 2013, p.72]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Oct 7, 2013
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Lay It Down
    One of popular music's great voices is being flattered by his surroundings in a way he hasn't in a long, long time.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    From A Basement On The Hill
    The record is strong and radiant, if not always upbeat.... One of the best he ever made. [22 Oct 2004, p.92]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Alvvays
    First albums rarely arrive catchier or more self-assured than this Toronto indie-pop quintet's frothy inaugural go. [9 Aug 2014, p.67]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Aug 5, 2014
    • 70 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Bitter Rivals
    It's all still loud and lovely, but with a fresh dose of dynamism. [11 Oct 2013, p.72]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Oct 7, 2013
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Hold Time
    Hold Time does, in fact, feel timeless, a musical wanderer's dusty, train-hopping tour through folk, blues, and country.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    I Learned The Hard Way
    I Learned the Hard Way, her fourth album with the Dap-Kings is pure joy, even when heartbreak sends her voice digging deep. This isn't just old-school; it is school.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Canterbury Girls
    The sisters are truly coming into their own here, exploring new sonic avenues and expressing themselves with beautiful, and occasionally brutal, honesty. [1 Mar 2019, p.51]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Feb 25, 2019
    • 72 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Cardinology
    Ryan Adams and his backing band The Cardinals have got their sound down to a science, all right: Cardinology, as embodied by their fourth album in as many years, is a precisely calibrated method of creating cool, reflective pools of vocal harmonies and pedal steel, accented from time to time by fiery electric-guitar licks.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Hypnotic Eye
    All of Hypnotic carries a sense of knowing urgency. [9 Aug 2014, p.67]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Aug 5, 2014
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Birds Make Good Neighbors
    Wondrously echoes the somber strains of Yo La Tengo and the more timid tendencies of the Arcade Fire. [23 Sep 2005, p.91]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Okonokos [Live]
    This is an impressive representation of the MMJ live experience. [29 Sep 2006, p.81]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 65 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Delta Machine
    Delta Machine is the strongest album the group has put out this century, brushing up against the locked-in grooves of the group’s late-‘80s crest that began with 1984’s Some Great Reward and ran through the revolutionary classic Violator in 1990.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Here
    Before you dismiss them as Hollywood hippies, know that they're serious about the lovely troubadour melodies on Here.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Girl In The Other Room
    Alternately poignant and playful. [30 Apr 2004, p.161]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
    ''Yankee Hotel Foxtrot'' is a subliminal album. Spin it once and it barely registers. Play it five or six times and its vaporous, insinuating, rusty-carousel melodies start to carve out a permanent orbit in your skull.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Lady Wood
    Lo sounds as if she’s in the throes of a quarter-life crisis. And what a beautiful and messy one it is.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Nuclear Daydream
    A dark, Velvet-y set. [22 Sep 2006, p.95]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Paid Tha Cost To Be Da Boss
    He's backed by the best production he's had since his Dr. Dre-helmed debut.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook
    Sometimes torchy and always gut-wrenching, her knowing rasp pushes the album onto terra firma between the blues and power pop.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Here's My Song You Can Have It... I Don't Want It Anymore/Yours 4-Ever
    His songs evoke Van Morrison, Tim Buckley, and Springsteen without descending into pastiche. [17 Mar 2006, p.114]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Ghosts Of The Great Highway
    Honestly isn't too different from Painters. [Listen 2 This supplement, Nov 2003, p.39]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Once In A Lifetime
    Avoid the last disc, groove on the first two, and ruminate on the strange beauty of this sui generis body of work.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Body Of Song
    Alternate title: Bobby--Fully Loaded. [5 Aug 2005, p.67]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 66 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Just Like You
    The muscular, instantly recognizable growl that carried her to a fourth-place finish on American Idol's eighth season is all she needs to seamlessly wed a collection of first-rate ditties.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Live Anthology
    With all the hits plus an enjoyable assortment of rarities and covers, The Live Anthology is a comprehensive portrait of a perpetually professional live act.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Murray Street
    Sonic Youth find a balance--between formlessness and structure, melody and cacophony--that's eluded them for a while. [28 Jun 2002, p.142]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Let's Stay Friends
    The group is malevolent and charming at once, still a beguiling combo. [21 Sep 2007, p.82]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 73 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Afrodisiac
    Brandy's meatiest album to date. [9 Jul 2004, p.85]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 71 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Amber
    One of the most striking Brit-rock step-ups since Radiohead got The Bends. [17 Feb 2006, p.79]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Yes, I'm A Witch
    An excellent refresher course on Yoko Ono's endlessly underappreciated musical career. [9 Feb 2007, p.74]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh
    New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh's comfortable style only makes it that much easier to get pleasantly lost in.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Some People Have Real Problems
    She mixes it up with the sweet 'Academia' (featuring harmonies from Beck) and a soaring cover of the Kinks' 'I Go to Sleep.' But think of those as bonus tracks, adding flavor to an already stunning CD.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Slipstream
    Her slide-guitar playing throughout Slipstream is superb, and she slips her purring voice into every song like a letter going into an envelope addressed just to you.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Acoustic Recordings 1998-2016
    Acoustic Recordings spools along as if conceived as a work unto itself, not a crazy quilt of quiet odds ‘n’ sods.
Page: